Comments on: What caused the Little Ice Age?

By: Kevin Mudd

Kevin Mudd — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 12:05:38 +0000

If we are at the same temperature as before the lia then aren’t we at the normal temperature ?

By: Global Warming Issues :) « Dr. Erika Grundstrom

Global Warming Issues :) « Dr. Erika Grundstrom — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 07:30:08 +0000

[...] A Bad Astronomy blog post about new research about the cause of the Little Ice Age also linked to some new data put out by [...]

By: mikel

mikel — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:25:11 +0000

JosephG check this out.

By: Total

Total — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 13:35:25 +0000

The Thames hasn’t frozen since the 17th or 18th century? Really? What about 1963…there are plenty of easy to find photos of a frozen Thames from that year.

I’m assuming he means in London, where the Thames did *not* freeze over in 1963:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_1962–1963_in_the_United_Kingdom

By: Nigel Depledge

Nigel Depledge — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:20:05 +0000

Joseph G (93) said:

Wow! Sounds like an underwater version of the “Killer cold wind” from “The Day After Tomorrow”

Kind of, except for lacking the impossibility of TDAT’s killer cold wind!

In fact, all of the sea-floor organisms in the seas fringing Antarctica are poikilothermic (sp?), i.e. their bodies will be at approximately the same temperature as their environment. This means that their metabolism tends to be pretty slow and therefore also their locomotion is slow. The effect is not so fast that a human diver (for example) would get encased in ice, but for a starfish that has a top speed of less than 1 cm/s it can be a real hazard.

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 05:03:13 +0000

The next ice age may be prevented from occurring.

I love this particular optimistic little tidbit. Sure, I guess. Eventually.
Still, that seems kinda like cheerfully telling someone whose home is submerged by floodwaters “Hey! As long as it’s like this, it’ll never catch on fire!”

@85 Nigel Depledge: 1. You can see the refractive effect of the denser fluid travelling down from the newly-forming sea ice (rather like a heat haze, but the density gradient that causes ths refraction is due to cold, not heat).
2. Because the brine is so cold (typically between 0 °C and -15 °C), it often forms tubes of ice as water freezes out of the less-salty water around the brine current. They look like stalactites, but form rather more rapidly, and have freezing-cold brine pouring out of their open ends.
3. Where these currents meet the sea floor, everything freezes, so you get patches of ice on the sea floor, and the ice encases everything that is too slow to move out of the way.

Wow! Sounds like an underwater version of the “Killer cold wind” from “The Day After Tomorrow”

By: Joseph G

Joseph G — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 04:58:57 +0000

@ MTU: Sometimes I think Al Gore did more harm than good with his personal HIRGO crusade. Sure, he may have raised awareness among a few people, but it seems like he distanced others from the issue because of his politics, and gave the deniers a handy straw man to attack.

By: Paul Pierett

Paul Pierett — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 02:27:34 +0000

Tx R.

Vaccines!

I guess that is why they call this blog. Discover.

By: JP

JP — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 23:47:02 +0000

The Thames hasn’t frozen since the 17th or 18th century? Really? What about 1963…there are plenty of easy to find photos of a frozen Thames from that year. I wouldn’t be surprised if it happens again this year, which has been a very cold winter for Europe. Drop the freezing Thames myth…it doesn’t help your argument.

By: Gary Ansorge

Gary Ansorge — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 22:00:34 +0000

“Most likely, the warmer temperatures would have melted the north polar sea ice. ”

I just wonder if the dilution of the Atlantic current is what’s driving the cold winter in Europe this year,,,or is that just another side effect of el nino/la nina?(dang, I have trouble keeping those two compartmentalized)(and spelling them right)

Gary 7